Integrated circuits and processors typically operate within specific expected operating conditions, such as process, voltage and temperature (often shortened to PVT). As circuits operate in smaller and smaller contained environments, process and temperature (often shortened to PT as used herein) variations may begin to affect the operation of various electronic components. For example, input/output blocks may operate with specific range of expected characteristics (e.g., slew rate, rise time, fall time, and maximum drive current). As is known, these drive characteristics change significantly with variations in process and temperature parameters from the designed—for values of these parameters. Furthermore, the voltage supply sources may provide degraded supply voltage as operating conditions become more strained which will further increase the spread (degraded) of the characteristics of input/output blocks.
The effects of various changes in operating conditions, however, may be known across the variations of different operating parameters. Thus, changes in operating parameters may be compensated by knowing the specific operating conditions. Thus, typical circuits may often include temperature sensors, process sensors and other operating condition sensing circuitry or combined PVT sensing circuitry for providing compensation to drive characteristics of I/O blocks. However, this circuitry is typically large (with respect to the overall area of the integrated circuit die) and takes away precious space from actual functionality of the integrated circuit—especially when there are multiple voltage supply sections for the I/O blocks. Therefore, a need arises for keeping any operating condition compensation circuitry to a minimum with respect to actual die space as well as power consumption.